It is worthy of record in this place, that, of all the forts and garrisons in the King’s interest, those of Raglan and Pendennis endured the longest sieges, and held out the last of any forts or castles in England--being bravely defended by two persons of very great age--and were at length delivered up within a day or two of each other. “<g>Raglan</g>,” says Lord Clarendon, “was maintained with extraordinary resolution and courage by the old <g>Marquess of Worcester</g> (then 85) against Fairfax himself, until it was reduced to the greatest necessity. Pendennis refused all summons; admitting no treaty till all their provisions were so far consumed that they had not victuals left for four-and-twenty hours; and then they treated, and carried themselves in the treaty with such resolution and unconcernedness, that the enemy concluded they were in no straits, and so gave them the conditions they proposed, which were as good as any garrison in England had accepted. The governor of Pendennis was <g>John Arundel</g> of Trerice, in Cornwall, an old gentleman of near fourscore years of age, who, with the assistance of his son Richard, afterwards made a baron in memory of his father’s service, and his own eminent behaviour throughout the war, maintained and defended the same to the last extremity.”[274] Returning to the subject of Raglan, we must not overlook the following predictions, as calculated to excite no little attention in times when witchcraft, sorcery, and apparitions, were admitted as articles of popular belief. <g>Prophecies.</g>--Of the prophetic warnings which, from time to time, and particularly during the siege, had taken possession of the vulgar mind regarding the fall of Raglan and its hereditary lords, the following passage is sufficiently characteristic:--One evening, during the progress of the siege, one of his officers was relating to the Marquess how strangely the narrator, Dr. Bayly, had escaped a shot by means of the iron bar of a window that looked out upon the leaguer. Standing, for example, in a window of the castle, there came a musket bullet and hit full against the edge of an iron bar of a chamber window, so that it parted the bullet in halves, the bar expatiating itself by degrees towards the middle; “one half of the bullet,” said he, “flew by me on the one side, and the other half on the other side; so that, by God’s providence, I had no hurt.” “The Marquess hearing this, asked me in what chamber it was. I told him. His Lordship then said, as I remember, ‘The window was cross-barred; and you will never believe me,’ said he emphatically, ‘how safe it is to stand before the <g>Cross</g>, when you face your enemy!’”